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| Adjusting the orientation with Edit. |
It's been less than a year that I bought that Animare pose maker on a whim. I love taking photos and had collected quite a few poses, mostly freebies, but some purchased. I bravely waded into the pose making, knowing no more than what the instructions were and having no idea what to make until I recalled my obsession with the Classical Ages of ancient Greece and Rome and decided to make some poses from statuary.
Okay, they were a bit rubbishy because I hadn't set all the points, so the head or the whole trunk of the body would shift around while the arms and legs stayed put. Or sometimes the whole avatar would slip a little sideways. I wanted to correct this, but I didn't want to have to remake each pose. Instead, I put the poses into poseballs and set them out in a box as freebies.
Then last weekend I was looking at my collection (saved as .bvh files in a folder in my documents) and noticed that in the beginning I had written down all the numbers for each joint. I wondered if I could compare that to the series of numbers in the .bvh files and decode them.
If I could do that, I could just edit the .bvh file and upload that. So I copied the numbers from the .bvh files and pasted them at the bottom of the corresponding notes and printed them off. At last I could see what I had done wrong and hoped to be able to correct it.
The first set of three numbers (after the set of three "0.000001") was the Hip. In order for the avatar to hold still during the pose, the three 0s had to be changed to 0.1. This sets that point. Using the HUD it would just be moving one bit of that joint and then moving it back. It still says 0 0 0 on the HUD, but it reads 0.1 0.1 0.1 when saved to a .bvh file.
Now, unfortunately, the three numbers are not in the same order in Animare as they are in the .bvh file. So I had to puzzle that out as well. Once all the mistakes were corrected, I was able to take some final photos of various avs in position (as well as quickly making a fig leaf for modesty ... which I decided to include with the poses), make a Point Of Sale sign and upload it all to
my marketplace shop.
If anyone follows after me in my clumsy footsteps, here are the body parts in order along with the Animare positions corresponding with those in the final .bvh file. The numbers reflect the order that they appear in the Animare HUD.
Mystery ## 0.000001; 0.000001; 0.000001
Hip forth/back; side; turn
Abdomen forth/back; side; turn
Chest forth/back; side; turn
Neck forth/back; side; turn
Head forth/back; side; turn
Left Collar forth/back; up/down; turn
Left Shoulder up/down; forth/back; turn
Left Elbow forth/back; up/down; turn
Left Wrist up/down; forth/back; turn
Right Collar forth/back; up/down; turn
Right Shoulder up/down; forth/back; turn
Right Elbow forth/back; up/down; turn
Right Wrist up/down; forth/back; turn
Left Hip forth/back; in/out; turn
Left Knee forth/back; in/out; turn
Left Ankle up/down; turn; to side
Right Hip forth/back; in/out; turn
Right Knee forth/back; in/out; turn
Right Ankle up/down; turn; to side
Once you know where you've gone wrong, you can probably easily fix it on the fly. When you upload (and I love Firestorm for this because you see the pose on your av and not on a dummy in a little window), wiggle your cursor around to make sure you are locked in place (where you
want to be - some poses might just be upper body or an arm) and if there's a wiggle where you don't want it or some odd tilt to the whole av you didn't expect, you can just open the .bvh file, adjust, and upload it again. And keep doing that until it behaves.
More information at the
Animare website - although I warn you that there isn't much, mostly because this is a very easy program to use.
